I nodded, my heart feeling like it was being twisted slowly, around and around.
“But that’s not the only thing I feel. And a lot of the other stuff is good. Or could be.” He lifted his head, meeting my eyes again. Jack hesitated, maybe afraid to ask or wondering if it was even worth it, then said quietly, “Will you come home?”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking me if I’d go back to Ashville someday or if he was asking me to go back now. With him. Either way, my answer was the same. “Yes.”
He blinked, surprised maybe at how easy that had been, things having not been easy with me most of the times he’d tried. “What have you been doing out here, Cass?”
“Finding myself.” Cliché, but utterly true.
“And? Did you?”
I nodded.
He smiled gently, reached up to push a stray wisp of hair from my face; his touch, his gaze, everything about him so different from Zander. Honest, open, sincere. It made him no less magnetic. I could feel the electricity between us, a heat that melds things together rather than blows them apart. The tension of our closeness was the same as the day we’d first kissed in the preserve.
“Jack …” I wasn’t sure how I was going to say it, but somehow I needed to know. Not how he felt about me. His being here, having flown all this way, waiting on my doorstep, the look in his eyes—it all told me that.
I needed confirmation of the thing I’d always wondered. If I could tell. Because I needed to. Maybe not right now, but definitely someday.
He stared down at me, his eyes soft though his face was serious, still hurt by how I’d left. Erasing that would take time. “Yeah?”
But there was no way to ask.
What question is there that will get you the real answer to whether you can share the weirdest, scariest, most secret thing about yourself ? You have to just know. Have faith.
Standing there with him—remembering the way we’d sat side by side in his living room, both of us teary watching Bambi, or how, when we were ten, he’d secretly slip the dollar he’d won from me at poker into my backpack, thinking I needed it, or the way he’d held me after Nan had died, not caring what his girlfriend or anyone else in the world might think if they saw us together like that—flipping through our memories and years, I knew.
I took a deep breath, understanding there was no taking it back and sure—positive, actually—that I wouldn’t want to. That with Jack, I wouldn’t ever have to.
“Come upstairs with me,” I said, slipping my hand in his, feeling the warmth of him, familiar, secure, but still thrilling. Maybe more so because of it. “There’s so much I want to tell you.”